Senators Dianne Feinstein and Dick Durbin are super upset that the Gitmo detention facility is still open in the era of HopeNchange
(LA Times) The detention facility on our military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is holding 166 individuals. Most of them have been there a decade or more.
Operating Guantanamo costs about $450 million a year — or about $2.7 million a detainee, according to the Defense Department. Consider this: It costs $78,000 to hold a convicted terrorist in the most secure federal prison in the United States, Supermax in Colorado. With the sequester stretching budgets and Defense Department employees under furloughs, the U.S. is spending, per Guantanamo detainee, roughly 35 times the amount it spends at Supermax detaining a convicted terrorist.
This is a massive misuse of taxpayer money.
Right, because it’s better waste tens of billions of taxpayer money on failed “green” projects designed to hook up Democrat donors and supporters, not too mention the $850 billion Stimulus itself. How about DiFi’s $4 billion pork for ritzy West La? And we remember when Durbin compared the Americans working at Gitmo to Nazi’s.
The fact that Gitmo is stop operating is apparently the fault of Congress (read: Republicans), because at no point did Democrats fully control both the House and Senate during Obama’s time as President. In fact, the first thing Obama did was sign a finding saying Gitmo would be closed. He didn’t bother doing the work to actually follow through, though. Shocking for Obama, eh?
Anyhow, neither Durbin nor Feinstein are willing to house the jihadis in their own home states, but they do want the remaining Islamists either transferred to other nations (where they will mostly be set free) or tried
The 2014 Senate defense authorization bill will come up for debate on the Senate floor this fall. Congress must pass the provisions that streamline procedures for transferring detainees abroad and allow transfers to the U.S. for trial or detention under international law until the end of hostilities.
How about under US law? No, no, wait, let’s use international law, namely the Geneva Convention, which allows summary execution of those found fighting without a uniform as spies or mercenaries. Not that that would really happen, though Obama does seem to prefer drone striking jihadis to death instead of taking them captive.
I suggest that we do prosecute them in military court, as the Geneva Convention suggest, and house them in Feinstein and Durbin’s home towns of San Francisco and Springfield, Ill.
The cost breakdown of the stimulus bill included 1/3 for tax relief. Teach were you against that? Another 1/3 went to the states to help them pay for salaries, primarily first responders and teachers. The remaining 1/3 went to infrastructure..
Perhaps you forget that before it was passed Bush had totally crashed the economy; the Dow had lost 50% of its value and the American automobile industry was about to die.
about 80% have those detained at Gitmo have already been released, before obama became POTUS. Now there are about another 75% whom the military has said should be released but we have no palce to send them. Sort of a no exit strategy with Gitmo, sound familiar?